Archive | January, 2008

WebRipper – Ripping Media from the Web

Jan/17 in Desktop Apps

WebRipper WebRipper might be the best tool to use if you need to take pictures or media files from the web and save them to your own PC. The program is totally free and offers several filter options to allow you to control where, when and how the files are downloaded.

The downside is that it will take a little ‘bit of tweaking before you get things just right – and that might frustrate some people. The good side is, this program was once thought to be forgotten about but was just updated recently.

It also supports more than just picture formats. Here is the full list of file types supported.

Supported file-types:
Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Videos: MPEG, AVI, QuickTime, Real Video, WMV
Audio: MP3, WAV, Real Audio, MIDI
Documents: DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF, TXT
Other: Flash, EXE, TORRENT, ZIP

The hidden gem of this program is the search function that will allow you to scrap the Web for images tht meet your keyword and size requirements.

Now there are perfectly good reasons to use this tool. Lets say you wanted to save a long list of photos your sweetie sent you of your Christmas vacation together? Saving each one, one by one would be a pain – but using this to take them from the Web makes the job much easier.

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Best of? Dual Monitor Wallpapers

Jan/16 in Desktop, Free Wallpaper, Popular Posts

Figuring out how to stretch my desktop wallpaper from one monitor all the way across to the next was one of those tasks I felt stupider about after words, because it is so simple. The secret to it all is to find a really long and large wallpaper and then set it to “tile” in your wallpaper preferences.

I can’t tell you how long I searched to figure that one out, so consider it a freebie from me to you. Now that I have one 22 inch (widescreen) monitor and one 19 inch monitor side by side I had to find some cool wallpaper to tickly my desktop fancy.

DeviantArt saves my day yet again! They have a slew of widescreen wallpapers to pick from, and here are a few of my favorites.

Face It - Widescreen Wallpaper
Face It by ~AerosoIFun

Retro World - Widescreen Wallpaper
Retro World by -kol

Lucid Vertices - Dual Screen Wallpaper
Lucid Vertices by`sya

Know of any other resources that have really wide wallpaper? They seem to be few and far between but they are out there.

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DreamHost Over Charge You Yet?

Jan/15 in Web Hosting

Dreamhost’s Nightmare

Looks like the DreamHost people fell asleep yet again at the wheel. What they describe as a “teensy eensy weensy little billing error” turned out to be $400 to $9,000 in overcharging their customers. Feedback is coming in quickly with the story being posted all over the ‘net.

Usually finding themselves being bullied by DreamHost themselves, Lunarpages has rolled out a great deal for any DreamHost people wanting to switch.

Use code DHRefugees to receive $40 off hosting with Lunarpages and we will also buy out the remainder of your contract with DreamHost! (Up to 9 months!)

Here is more about the fiasco from the Web:

Not a good time to be a customer of DreamHost, that is for sure. Also as a point worth mentioning for all fairness, I am a contracted worker for LP… but anybody who has seen my publicly viewable resume and mention of if here time and time again can see that. :)

Update: Looks like by watching the DreamHost blog they have posted a few more posts after the one that was heard around he Web. Seems like they are doing a better job the second time around discussing this issue than the first. I’ll give them two thumbs up for that.

Update #2: No, I was not bullied by anybody to update this post (removing some of the negativity) – I took in feedback, and adjusted my thoughts, it happens. :) As for those who want to try to drag me into a public fight over one of my employers – no thanks, got more important things to worry about than people trying to make a name out of themselves by trying to shoot me down.  Thanks for reading!

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Feed Suggestions from L to O?

Jan/15 in Hot Web Topics, Resources

We are coming in on the home stretch as far as my must read RSS and web site suggestion list goes. I am sure this will all get linked together once it has all been written, but till then check out some of these favorite resources of mine.

Life of an Internet Entrepreneur – Pinny Cohen’s blog is one that I can suggest to anybody and everybody. A true entrepreneur in every since of the word, watch a lot of what Pinny has done inspired me early on to keep doing what I am doing.

Worthy Example Post: Online Organization Tools for Freelancers

Lifehacker – Who doesn’t subscribe to Lifehacker might be a better (and somewhat shorter list) to suggest. They have been helping me “get things done” for a long time now.

Worthy Example Post: Better Gmail 2

Lorelle on WordPress – Lorelle’s well written posts and help via the blog here is one of the reasons I really decided to turn to WordPress to do everything. Still have yet to figure out how to get WordPress to write my posts for me, but I am sure Lorelle might be working on that one too.

Worthy Example Post: What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content

Mashable! – I started subscribing to Mashable as an alternative to Tech Crunch, but over the years it has bee much more than a replacement. It stands alone when it comes to delivering news and tips about the new social Web.

Worthy Example Post: Pandora Now Available Anywhere With GlobalPandora

Mozilla Developer News – One of the best internal Firefox blogs and news feeds out there today. If you want to keep up to date with the latest Mozilla is working on, this is the site for you.

Worthy Example Post: Firefox 3 Beta 2 now available for download

Mozilla Links – Mozilla Links does a good job at catching all the goodies that fall from the cracks over at the Mozilla camp. It is one of my favorite resource feeds for when I am working on material for my other site, FirefoxFacts.com.

Worthy Example Post: Firefox 3 Beta 2 review

Official Google Reader Blog – Ever since giving up on a slew of other feed readers out there, I have yet to find a reason to turn away from Google Reader. Reading their blog means I too can keep up with what they are doing as far as the development end goes.

Worthy Example Post: Managing your shared items

Who knows, you might love them yourself and want to share them with others. Just remember who told you about them in the first place, and feel free to share me some link love anytime you please.

Checkout the Entire Feed Suggestion Series!

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Is Your Desktop Naked?

Jan/14 in Desktop

Well, mine is. Working with an empty desktop can make managing your work a lot easier. For me, all the folders and paths I need are right inside of the start menu. From there I can get to my documents, music, photos and more.

Mitch’s Empty Desktop

With a clean desktop I have more room to work. Now for designers you could see this coming in handy because they would have plenty of place to work on multiple images, files and folders and have them all saved to the desktop.

With my podcast – I do much of the same. I keep all the different segments I have recorded save temporarily to to desktop so that way I have them handy when I need them. That way when I finish my job or project I can just hit Ctrl + A then move them over to a new folder if I need to keep them or hit delete if I want to toss them away.

How about you? How naked is your desktop or have you tried it with a naked desktop? For me it is one of my easy productivity techniques that keep me sane.

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Joining the Cotton Club

Jan/13 in Interviews, Web Hosting

Cotton Rohrscheib InterviewA partner in the Pleth Networks high end web hosting and development company, Cotton Rohrscheib is more than just your interesting hosting personality.

He has his hand in a number of different cookie jars including Powersite, Pleth Networks and his own personal blog the Cotton Club.

I was lucky enough to get a few free moments of his time to ask him about the hosting world, alligator fights and everything in between.

What advice would you have for somebody who is just breaking into the web hosting or web development world and wants to get started with their own company or service?

Cotton: I would advise anyone wanting to get into the hosting business to first research out their infrastructure for a while before making a decision. Important factors to look at would be bandwidth, scalability, and backup solutions. With Pleth, we feel that we are positioned well with our hosting infrastructure, we utilize a private rack solution with a 5 day running backup interval. We also are taking advantage of newer technologies like virtualization, etc., which has allowed us to go after the growing VPS market that is starting to emerge stronger than ever.

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TinyLoad.com – Mass Support for File Hosting

Jan/13 in Free Hosting, Hot Web Topics

TinyLoad File HostingSupporting up to 100 MB of file hosting, TinyLoad.com looks to be your go to place when it comes to starting that free file upload.

The interface is simple. Go to the web site, browse for your file, then upload. The magic here is that it is uploading your one file to four of the biggest and best free file hosts out there: MediaFire, Megaupload, Rapidshare, and DivShare.

One uploaded you are given an easy to read URL to pass to friends and family, such as: http://tinyload.com/SBtNYJ

The icing on the cake is the API they have release around the service as well. Of course a lot of this requires that the file hosts play along too – but I see no reason why they should not.

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Mitch’s Super Archives

Jan/12 in Web Development Tutorials

Re-designed my archives for Mitchelaneous today…

Mitch’s Super Archives

This was all done with the help of the WordPress category tags and the Smart Archives plugin. Didn’t really realize it till today, but I have posts going all the way back to 2004. So if you want an easier way to browse my site – headline by headline feel free to try this out.

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Blogger, VP and Geek – Kayla Fleming Talks

Jan/11 in Interviews, Web Hosting

Kayla Fleming Hosting Interview

Kayla Fleming, the Vice President over at Surpass Hosting is one of those people who I had always read or watched (no wait, that makes me sound like a stalker doesn’t it?) but never introduced myself to till a few days ago. I needed an interesting personality to talk with and she seemed to take the proverbial cake. I have been a big fan of her work and wanted to learn a little more. According to her profile over at the WHIR…

Kayla has experience in all areas of web hosting from conducting market research to securing server environments. Kayla has worked with Internet companies for nine years and has been involved in the web hosting industry since 2002. Under Kayla’s direction, Surpass has reached record growth each year. She is also responsible for the company’s forum, one of the most active communities among web hosts.

Now your caught up to the same spot it Kayla’s story I was at before this greatly enjoyable chat between the two of us.

How did you “break in” to the wild and wacky world of web hosting we live in today?

Kayla: My first job was doing tech support at an all Mac powered ISP. That was powerful inspiration to stay on the geek path. I watched sites like Blogger.com pop up from thin air and saw a lot of trends unfold. I think it happened very naturally and I was at the right place at the right time.

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Mitch Does Dual Screen (Productivity Tip)

Jan/10 in Personal

Decided to hook my old monitor up next to my new one, since my new PC can handle both. At first it was a little odd but I do have to say I feel more productive at least.

Dual Screens

It makes it much easier to check e-mail, browse the Web and work on an article all at the same time. Of course right now I am still amused by moving windows from screen to screen but I am sure that will pass with time.

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